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The Bible Breakdown
BBXtra: Chapter 12 of 12 Points that Prove Christianity is True
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The More We Dig. The More We Find.
Well, everybody, welcome back to the Bible Breakdown podcast with your host, pastor Brandon. And today we finish up a 12-month journey, a 12-month journey through one of my favorite apologetics books 12 Points that Show Christianity Is True. 12 Points that Show Christianity Is True by one of my heroes, dr Norman L Geisler. And if you've been with us for a while, you've noticed that these podcasts get shorter and shorter and shorter, and that's because the chapters get shorter and shorter and shorter, because, as you have built a foundation think of it like a pyramid when it comes to showing that Christianity is true, you have to start with the foundation of just establishing that truth exists, right. Well, by the time you build all the way to today, it really has proven itself. And if you've been with us, I wanna remind you about a couple of things, and then we're just gonna read this and show how it flows together. First of all, dr Norman Geisler was a professor and he ended up kind of helped co-founding two different seminaries. He was a brilliant, brilliant guy. I'd highly recommend for you going to YouTube and you can watch his biography documentary about his life. It's just powerful what God did in his life. One of the stories he tells is that when he was a kid, like a teenager, he went out witnessing on I think it was Chicago's version of Skid Row. He's out there with a bunch of homeless people and he's trying to talk to them about the goodness of God. And there was a guy who took a Bible and he said I went to Bible school once you know you're not doing what God's Word says you're supposed to do, right, he's like what do you mean? And he said well, look right here. And he opened up his Bible and he looked to a place where Jesus healed this guy of leprosy and he says look right here. It says see that you go and tell no one what I've done. He said you're not supposed to be here and he just walked away. And Dr Norman Geisler said I knew that wasn't right, but I didn't know how to prove him wrong on that. So he's like I had to leave and he's like stinking homeless, atheist guy just used the Bible to shut me up. And so that started his journey of realizing he needed to be able to not just prove Christianity is true but defend it as well.
Speaker 1:And Dr Norman Geisler was very much one of those who talked about how in the Bible. It says you must be able to defend what you believe, but do it with gentleness and kindness. So it is not unkind to tell someone that they're wrong about something, it's just how you do it. Well, he became just his life. Verse was where Paul said I have been put here for the defense of the gospel and he just spent his life just equipping people to know how to know what God's word says, know it was true, and then how to defend it. And so, by the way, he was later able to say well, that verse that guy used was completely out of context. Jesus had healed a guy of leprosy and he said hey, don't tell anybody right now. Instead, go and prove your healing. So it wasn't about not witnessing for Christ, it was a particular situation taken out of context.
Speaker 1:And so Dr Norman Geisler understood that a lot of times people are going to have just a thousand different objections to Christianity. And if you have a system on how to prove Christianity is true, you can kind of do a mental checklist of, okay, where are we at in this conversation, and you can help step them toward Christianity. And so he starts with. You know, out of the 12 steps, the first one is just the nature of truth, and he ends with Christianity. So we're going to read this together and watch how it flows together. But first I will say the goal of these 12 times together has been for us to talk through what we read in the chapter. But Dr Norman Geisler actually has a lecture on each one of these 12. They're like 45 minutes to an hour long. So he does a lot of good work on that, which is also why we're not trying to recover that ground right. But this is what he says you can start from anywhere and you can prove that Christianity is true by the law of first principles, and just one at a time, getting to the natural conclusion in logic.
Speaker 1:Right, here's the first one, and that is this Truth about reality is knowable. The first thing we have to do is we have to be able to establish that truth is not a construct. It is certain. Now, that doesn't mean that all truths are equal, you know, because you do have things called opinions, and that is a form of truth, but it is a subjective truth. You have objective, observable truth, which doesn't care how you feel about it, it's going to operate the same way. A great example of this is mathematics. Two plus two is always four, no matter what you tell the bank, you know what I mean. And gravity is always true.
Speaker 1:If someone doesn't believe that truth is real, you'll push them off a roof. No, don't actually do that, but tell them them. If you were to jump off a roof, if you believed you were not going to fall, are you not going to not going to fall? If they say no, if I believe hard enough I won't fall, don't even have the conversation. Okay, you have to agree that all that truth about reality is knowable, right, once you've established and that's the big foundation of the triangle, of of the pyramid.
Speaker 1:Level two is opposites cannot both be true. That's important because you can't have two opposing statements be true. In other words, gravity exists and gravity doesn't exist on earth right now. Now you can have things that are true in different circumstances, like if someone says, well, yeah, gravity is and is not, you know, is and is not viable, because it's not viable in space right now. Well, yeah, but is it true? At the same place, at the same time? Yeah, so number one, big one truth about reality is knowable. Number two opposites cannot both be true. Then number three it is true that a theistic God exists.
Speaker 1:Remember that there are different ways people believe in God. You have to get to the bottom of that too. You have atheists. They believe there is no God. That is objectively true. There is no God can't be right. That's actually the hardest one, because there's so much possibility for God that if someone is a complete, total atheist, then I would encourage you to not get defensive. If someone says an atheist, I would always ask them why, like why You're telling me you cannot find any proof for God at all, ever. You can just point to the eye and talk about how you know there's so much proof for at least the possibility of God that I think most people are not atheists. I think most people are agnostic. Agnostic is people who say I don't know if God exists and I don't think it's possible to know if God exists. I think most people are that. I've not met very many true atheists.
Speaker 1:Then those who believe in God are called. You have deists and then you have other kinds, but the main two are deists and you have theists. A deist believes there is a God, but he spun the world into existence and now he don't care. He is sitting back like watching an ant farm and just watching it go. Then you have theists who believe that God didn't just spin it to existence, but he entered into the ant farm and he wants to have a personal connection with his creation. That's what a theist is, and there are proofs for that. So truth is knowable. The opposites cannot be true. At the same time, a theistic God exists, and you can go to that chapter to find all the proof for that.
Speaker 1:And then the next one miracles are possible If God exists, and you can go to that chapter to find all the proof for that. And the next one miracles are possible If God exists. That means an all-knowing, all-wise, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent. God has the ability to step into his natural law and do something that is not natural, which is a miracle, once you prove that. Number five is miracles performed in connection with a truth claim confirm the truth of God through a messenger of God. In other words, if God is speaking through someone God's in charge, then they should be able to do something impossible, something that violates natural order, in order to prove that God is speaking through them. That makes sense, right? Okay? So then, if that's the case, then you say, okay.
Speaker 1:Well then the New Testament documents are reliable and this is one of my favorites, because this is kind of my area of expertise in proving that the New Testament documents are reliable and you can go to that chapter and learn all about that, that actually there is more evidence for the reliability. You may not believe that what they are saying is accurate, but you have to at least believe that what they're saying is accurate as they wrote it down right, like what we have is what they wrote down. You may not believe what they say, but you pretty well have to believe that that is what they actually said, right. So truth about reality is knowable. Opposites cannot both be true. It is true that the theistic God exists. Miracles are possible, miracles in conjunction with a truth claim who says they are from God proves that they are a messenger of God. And then the New Testament documents are reliable.
Speaker 1:Number seven as witnessed in the New Testament, jesus claimed to be God. Number eight Jesus claimed to be God was proven by a unique convergence of miracles. So in other words, he said I'm God, let me prove it to you. And he did miracles which are outside natural order healing people, raising the dead, coming back to life himself that proved he was God. Therefore, number nine Jesus was God in human flesh. If all those are true, then Jesus was God in human flesh, because he said he was God. Therefore, number nine Jesus was God in human flesh. If all those are true, then Jesus was God in human flesh, because he said he was and he proved it.
Speaker 1:Number 10, whatever Jesus, who is God, affirmed as true, is true. Jesus affirmed. Number 11, that the Bible is the word of God. And if that's true, here's the last one. That's the last one. It is true. The Bible is the Word of God and whatever is opposed to biblical truth is false. Now, that doesn't mean that truths outside the Bible are all false, because there's things the Bible doesn't speak about. That is true. In other words, it doesn't say the word gravity, but gravity is a thing right, but it's. Whatever is opposed to it is false and whatever it affirms is true.
Speaker 1:And you know, what the Bible affirms is true Is that in the beginning, god created Adam and Eve. He loved them. They fell into sin. God went on a rescue mission to save them. That in that, in the fullness of time, about 3 BC, jesus came into the world. He died on the cross. He rose again and he said what I just did was the eternal sacrifice for your salvation, and if you will pledge your allegiance to me, it's called being saved. Allow me to wash away your sins. I will do that. I will set you free from the bondage of sin, death and eternal punishment. I've taken it upon myself. You can receive eternal salvation. That's what the Bible claims.
Speaker 1:And if you can go from truth about reality is knowable all the way to what the Bible says is true, that's where salvation comes in. But you don't get there by just starting with well, you know the Bible's true. Well, if you say that to an atheist, they'll just laugh at you no, it's not. And then you know what you've got to do. You've got to prove it. If you make a huge claim that the Bible is true because the Bible says it is exclusive, the Bible says there's one way to heaven, that means you are saying every other religion is wrong. You're saying every deist is wrong. You're saying every atheist is wrong, you are making a very powerful truth claim. And so if you're the one who starts by saying the Bible is true and you need to get saved, you need to be able to prove it. Because what you're going to do on the other side is, if someone comes up to you and says God's not real, the Bible is full of contradictions, it's false, you know what you get to say Prove it. I will wait, and then you let them prove it. But if you say the Bible is true, allow them to say prove it. And then you go on your mission and you say well, can we start first with this? Let me give you an example. Let's say that's exactly what happens.
Speaker 1:You're talking to someone and you're talking to them around the holidays. You're having dinner and someone hears you've been going to church lately. Hey, you been going to church lately. Yes, I have. And you immediately start to feel that queasiness in your stomach. You're both excited, but yet you're not so excited because you know they are not Christ followers, they do not love Jesus. And they say well, why are you going to church? Well, because I believe in Jesus. I believe I was a sinner, he saved me. Man, what else could I do? I don't believe in any of that. What you don't believe in, god, why not? There you go. They have to start defending what they believe. And you just keep asking why, why, why, why? But what if, on the other side, if you get mad and you say, well, I believe the Bible's true, why in the world do you believe that's true?
Speaker 1:Your turn, you know what you do you say, well, let's start over again. Do you believe that truth is knowable? Well, yeah, I believe truth is knowable. Well, that's easy enough. All right, you're just like ah, I had a whole lot of stuff I wanted to say to you, but since you believe it's true, let's skip on, okay? Well then, if you believe that two opposite things can't be true at the same time, what do you mean? Like either God's real or he's not. He can't be real for me, but not real for you. Like he's real or he's not, of course, of course. Okay, well, that was easy enough, all right. Number three do you believe, then, that a theistic God exists? No, no, I don't believe that at all.
Speaker 1:Boom, there you are there, your conversation starts, and that doesn't mean you got to have this whole book memorized, but maybe you want to have one or two things in here. You say, okay, well, what do you do with where all this came from? What do you mean? Well, I mean, you look at the cosmological arguments. As you look at the stars and space and, like the mathematical precision of everything going on, you know where did this come from? How is it so perfect? How is it that if we were one degree closer, one degree further away from the earth, we'd all wouldn't be here? How did we get here, I don't know. Okay, well, I think that it's plausible that it's God. Well, I know it's not God. Well, how do you know that?
Speaker 1:Now you put them back on the defense again, and the reality is, many times you don't have atheists who don't believe in God. You have people who are mad at God or they don't want to serve God, and so they really don't have an intellectual problem, they have an emotional problem with God. That's a very different thing and that becomes then, well, honestly, god's real. It doesn't really matter how you feel about it, and you can have that conversation and that's what you slowly go through these different processes to figure out how to get to the place where you get to tell them the good news, and that is guess what?
Speaker 1:Here's the problem we all have, and that is, we were all born into the curse of sin, but God loved us so much he didn't leave us there and he washed away all of our sins and he gave us an opportunity to live free and whole in Christ. But it's going to cost us everything. It's going to cost us all of our sin, all of our shame, all of our fear, all of our worry and getting our own way. We get to follow Christ. Now we realize, once we start to follow Christ, we have more freedom than we could imagine. But it's freedom to be free not to fall back into sin again and that's powerful and that's the gospel. And what's also amazing is that when we come up against things we don't understand, we get to do it back to us. Something bad happens, we don't understand, we go back to. Well, you know what? I don't know about all that, but you know what I believe. I believe truth is knowable. I believe the two opposites of truth can't be the same. At the same time, I believe there's a theist to God. You just slowly start reminding yourself of Christianity.
Speaker 1:I hope you've enjoyed going through this book. I would highly recommend. If you are interested in any of this at all, or if there's one of these 12 steps that really holds you up, I would type in Dr Norman Geisler Geisler is G-E-I-S-L-E-R and type in that one and look it up and hear him talk for an hour about it and he will help you come to clarity on it and then I'll tell you. Something I've even done is I've written it down in my journal. I haven't committed all these to memory, but I've got them kind of as a working memory in my mind so that I can know where I'm at in conversations with people, and it's really, really good.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to see it next time when we get into the next chapter of the book of Jeremiah. But the next chapter of the book of Jeremiah, but the next Bible breakdown extra we're going to do. We're going to go through an amazing book on spiritual disciplines, vehicles to know God better, and I can't wait. But for now, I'll see you tomorrow for the next chapter in the book of Jeremiah.
